Issue 5, 2024

Mycomining: perspective on fungi as scavengers of scattered metal, mineral, and rare earth element resources

Abstract

Mining provides raw materials critical to our energy, agriculture, infrastructure, and technology but is associated with many environmental challenges. Resource recovery alternatives like urban mining rely on inconsistent supply streams and complicated disassembly and sorting, while extreme mining alternatives such as deep sea and space mining are potentially even less sustainable than traditional mining. This perspective investigates biological mining with emphasis on the potential of fungi for scavenging metals, minerals, and rare earth elements. “Mycomining” produces only biomass-based organic waste and can offer more versatile growth conditions than phytomining using hyperaccumulating plants including substrates ranging from soil, wood, water, and rock to living organisms and dark, space-restricted, or extreme i.e., pH levels, high salt, acidic, radioactive environments. This concept could represent a useful supplement to urban and phytomining to offset demand for traditional mining and is particularly viable when conventional mining may be inefficient or uneconomical i.e., with low-grade ores and sites unsuited to traditional mining for geographical, political, or social reasons.

Graphical abstract: Mycomining: perspective on fungi as scavengers of scattered metal, mineral, and rare earth element resources

Article information

Article type
Perspective
Submitted
01 nov 2023
Accepted
13 mar 2024
First published
15 mar 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Sustain., 2024,2, 1350-1357

Mycomining: perspective on fungi as scavengers of scattered metal, mineral, and rare earth element resources

M. P. Jones and A. Bismarck, RSC Sustain., 2024, 2, 1350 DOI: 10.1039/D3SU00398A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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